The 400 (This Movie Kind of) Blows

That is initially what I thought after watching the movie this past weekend. I didn’t feel that the movie was particularly engaging, the storyline felt like it dragged on, and the cinematics were not what I expected from the film. I’m not saying I expected to have my mind completely blown, but I really just felt like that aspect of the movie (the cinematography) was a little lacking in capturing my attention.

I tried to keep an open mind during the film and concentrate on something that I liked about it to keep me going. I will say that the attention to detail was very nice. I felt like I got a complete picture as to what was happening (at least from Antoine’s point of view). The end was just incredibly frustrating (as it was probably supposed to be). It offered no resolution whatsoever, and I just found myself feeling like I was cheated out of my last hour and forty minutes of viewing.

Reading the paper, however, I got a bit more of an appreciation for the film. Some of the cinematic techniques were “new” in this movie are probably ones that I have grown accustomed to. The part about the psychiatrist scene was also rather eye-opening. It made me really appreciate the acting of Jean-Pierre Léaud. The fact that the scene was stitched together pretty seamlessly, and the fact that Léaud was given free reign in that scene are really pretty impressive after some reflection. The fact that knowing the movie was also low-budget, helped me to appreciate it more. It seemed like Truffaut really took some risks with production and allowing the actors a little bit of freedom.

What also was really impressive to me was the fact that Truffaut tied in so much of his life into this movie. This was one instance of a critique reading that I could definitely agree with. With a tip of the hat to intentionalism, I really felt like the background on the author helped the story to be that much more impressive, particularly the simultaneous homage to René (the sibling he never was able to meet) and the dig at his parents.

I also didn’t feel like the movie was over the top or unbelievable as well. It did feel a bit like Antoine was a bit more independent and self-sufficient than someone his age may have been, but you later find out that he probably had a lot of growing up to do early on in his life.

I can’t say this is a movie that I would want to revisit, especially knowing what the ending holds, but I can definitely appreciate Truffaut as a director after seeing this movie. I would still have appreciated some more of a directed closure at the end of the movie despite the alleged “Italian neorealist story ambiguity”.

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4 comments

I have similar feelings with you. I didn’t understand what the movie is trying to do when I was watching the movie, especially when considering about some scenes which seem to be a little bit meaningless to me. However, after finishing the reading yesterday, I did appreciated the movie more. Some of my reasons are same with you, but I was also able to try to put myself into that era and look and the movie again and find out how different it is.

For the last scene, it was a total surprise to me. I didn’t expect it to end like that at all. Antoine’s ambiguous expression wrote a big question mark in my mind, which then pushed myself to reflect on my own childhood. This is interesting. Aren’t we all like Antoine to a certain degree? At least I find a little bit or even more of myself in his eyes.

I agree to what is being said above…
Seriously, I was looking at the track bar below and seeing that the movie is ending, but the story is far from an end. I thought, is there a sequel or something for a movie? Usually when we are watching a movie like this we can see that there is going down and then going up which reaches to the end of the movie, but this time, it is going down and down and down…. and the movie ends….???

This is off the topic of the class, but I see a lot of similarities in Antoine’s character and the whole village of children in this film http://www.imdb.com/media/rm935632128/tt0074152. I like this film because it peeks into the lives of children, who are people that have their own plights and victories like people tend to do.

“… this feature was initially intended to be a collection of shorter films, with the original script built around Antoine’s skipping school and lying about his mother’s death and the consequences that resulted. But once the funding was assured for a longer work, it was built, scene by scene, into a chronicle of several months in Antoine’s life.”

I, too, did not really like this movie all that much – although I REALLY wanted to. I felt like it dragged out, but now that I see how it was originally intended to be a collection of shorter films, I wonder if that would’ve been better for the execution of the story in order to hold the viewer longer and bring them back.